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Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wants an up or down vote on his bill that would require a full audit of the Federal Reserve, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn’t want to let that happen.

To force the issue, Paul is trying to block new nominees to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

On Wednesday, Paul failed to stop the confirmation of Stanley Fischer to the Board (although the former Bank of Israel governor hasn’t yet been confirmed as Vice Chair). That leaves two vacancies on the Board of Governors, with a third set to open up at the end of May when Jeremy Stein steps down.

When referring to “the Fed” in this context, we are really referring to the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The FOMC is the agency responsible for implementing the U.S. central banks’ monetary policy.

A fully staffed FOMC consists of all seven members of the Fed’s Board of Governors, as well as five Federal Reserve district bank presidents. The New York district bank president has a permanent seat on the committee, and four other district presidents rotate on a yearly basis.

So we normally concentrate the power of the Federal Reserve in the hands of 12 people. And now, with Stein’s vacancy, that power will be concentrated in the hands of nine people—this sort of reduction in force hardly portends economic disaster.

In fact, the debate over vacancies at the Fed serves only to distract us from the real issue, which is transparency at the Federal Reserve.

Oddly enough, in 1995 Harry Reid supported an audit-the-Fed bill and complained that even though he offered the legislation “every year” it never went anywhere. The framework for audits existing then is essentially the same in place today.

It is true that the Dodd-Frank Act subjected the “emergency lending” facilities created during the recent crisis to a full audit, and future emergency lending will be as well. Details on the Fed’s discount window lending must also be disclosed now with a two-year delay.

But discount window lending makes up a very small portion of what the Fed currently does, and there’s no reason all of the Fed’s operations shouldn’t be open to the public (with an appropriate time delay). The U.S. is still a democracy, and the Fed isn’t supposed to be harboring national secrets.

Senator Paul’s bill would merely serve to get rid of the remaining restrictions on Federal Reserve audits, thus opening the way to examine more closely items such as the Fed’s transactions with foreign central banks and deliberations concerning open market operations.

The Fed certainly is independent in that neither the President nor Congress decides what the Fed’s interest rate targets will be. But passing Paul’s bill wouldn’t change that arrangement. And there’s virtually no chance Congress will start having regular votes on what the Fed’s new targets should be, regardless of the fate of Paul’s bill.